Story:The End of Eternity/E14
XIV The clock tower was, without a doubt, the tallest structure for miles in the Thousand Eternal City. Constructed of the same drab dark-gray stone as every other building in the City, the only details of the tower that made it stand out besides its height were the sensations of life that still protruded from the tower’s walls. None of the clocks on the exterior of the tower worked. Three of the sides had clocks that were simple and elegant; plain white background, numerals from a forgotten age dictating the time of the day with hands that should be moving with clockwork; nothing out of the ordinary. But facing Arend, who walked towards the tower with the Ark falling towards him, was a clock unlike the others. It was much larger, for instance, and had a black background with golden time numerals. Above the original black clock was a much smaller one that projected from a large black needle in the center of the background clock, and this second layer was in a perfect circle with no letters or numerals written on it. The only things gracing this second clock were small scratches – billions and billions of small scratches that, from a distance, created what appeared to be a black coloring on the clock that was actually purely white. Besides the scratches, only a large, unnatural crack graced both of the clocks. In a flash of lightning, the sky momentarily lost its red hue and cloudy mask – the Ark was shaded completely dark, as if it caught no light; all the planets, scattered about the sky became visible; the moon and the Sun vanished; a handful of dust wafted past Arend’s face. In an instant, the flash was gone, and Arend arrived at the doors to the clock tower. Frigid winds blew past the boy, but he did not feel them, nor did Klaytaza. Not anymore. The door to the tower opened, then flickered and disappeared from existence. No input was necessary here. Not anymore. Arend walked inside, followed as silently as ever by Klaytaza. In front of the two was a room of pure darkness. Its area was immeasurable, for its boundaries were invisible; a dim light shone only on a spiral staircase some distance in front of them, one that climbed into the tall depths of the tower with a substance of twisted, vain, and ancient metal. Arend began to climb them. After the two had walked up the steps shrouded in darkness for some time, light suddenly began to shine from above and to the side of them. What began as little beads of light soon evolved into rivers of light, flowing and rushing outside of their reach as they climbed the stairs. Upon closer inspection, Arend realized that these light beams were actually free-standing streams of water, flowing and rushing organically down the dark chasm of the tower. The waters, separated by the stairs and composed of only clean and pure molecules, made no noise as it cut through the darkness. Arend and Klaytaza continued to ascend. Soon these waters began to illuminate the chasm around them. Slowly but surely, the two of them could see around them, with the amount of darkness lowering proportionally with the height they climbed on the stairs. At first, only dark clouds were visible near the bottom of the chasm, where they had started to climb. Still below them, layer upon layer of cold steel began to appear above the clouds. These layers of architecture soon overlapped so well that no sky was visible beneath them. The layers all differed slightly, but had similar themes of minimalism and untouched quality. Even higher up, these layers of steel began to fade in color until they eventually turned pitch black. The darkness was so strong that it appeared to completely overtake the lightness below, once again taking over the visual aesthetics of the previous atmosphere. From these equally minimalistic dark layers, tall columns of twisted steel arose, some of which bent into cross shapes in the top of their heights. As Arend and Klaytaza rose, so too did the heights of the metal stalks. Soon, with the shining of the light onto these scarecrows of industry, it became clear that roses – colored both red and violet – grew and tangled around these steel saplings. As the two continued upwards, the waters began to change position, until finally they spiraled loosely around the stairs. Still no sound could be heard from the waters, nor were they within reach of either Arend or Klaytaza. Below and past the waters, the metal stalks and rose gardens began to grow smaller and smaller. Eventually they became invisible, and when this occurred, the darkness beneath and around the stairs manifested into a closely-packed wall of clouds. Beams of light were visible here and there, but for the most part the entire atmosphere around the stairs and the water spirals around them were impenetrable by human eyes. Finally the clouds above the two, originating from the same spot the water spirals came from in the sky, began to drift apart and remove their veil. At first, the spot the clouds had previously occupied were very bright and impossible to see into, but soon this became visible, as well. The stairs ended, after what felt like an eternal trek into the atmosphere above, and led onto a flat platform less than half a mile in diameter. The water spirals led into the ground attached to the platform, which was apparently free-standing and had no visible support structures keeping it afloat in the cloudy air. Above the platform, in a clearing of clouds about double the size of said platform, floated a massive upside down cross; there was a naked man nailed to it, equal in size to the cross and positioned with his face on the surface of the cross, so that no distinguishing features were visible. Only huge wisps of long silver-blonde hair trailed from his head. The man and the cross were visible until around his waist, where the clouds met and covered him from view once again. Arend took a long moment to take in the dream-like landscape around him before taking the final steps onto the platform. As he did so, he shivered in the recognition of a group of people in front of him. Somewhere on the platform where many people, he could tell, all standing still and waiting for him… And somewhere above the platform, on the cross or perhaps above it, was another presence. This one was immense, gigantic, and strong, and felt as if it would weigh on him forever and never leave his consciousness. “God is here.” After his statement, Arend removed his hands from his pockets and twirled the pen in his grip; in response, he sensed people moving in front of him. Four Keys stepped out, followed by their Masters. The Keys were arranged in a semicircle facing Arend, and all of them were tall men with long black hair tied up in buns behind their heads. The left most Key had pale onyx celestial armor and held a long lance in his hands; the Key to his right had pitch black celestial armor over the uniform black bodysuit and carried a scale and scepter; the Key second from the far right had red celestial armor, much lighter than Klaytaza’s shade and resembling pink, and wielded a simple broadsword; the Key on the far right had completely white celestial armor, and had two knives in his hand. “The final four Keys left to battle,” Arend stated. His voice echoed surprisingly well through the dreamy landscape. He lifted his head with a scowl. “Well then… We all know why I am here. Come at us.” He blinked, and the pen in his hand transformed into the double-bladed longsword. Holding his hand out, Arend handed the blade to Klaytaza, who took it up in stride. “Not just yet,” spoke a hidden voice. The familiarity of the tone caused Arend to crumble his brow in confusion, but he did not falter more than this. The voice, however, remained entrenched in the darkness behind the four enemy Keys. “I am the fifth, and the true final. Only if you prevail will you be able to battle me and truly witness the end,” the camouflaged voice stated. “So am I to believe you are the End of the World?” Arend asked. A chuckle could be heard from the darkness; the four Keys and their Masters were eerily motionless. “Are we to believe you are the End of the World?” “You toy with me. That will be a mistake,” Arend growled. “All creation is a mistake. All monotony is eternity, all memories are perpetuity. Suspended and corporeal,” muttered the disconnected voice, barely audible in the silence of the platform. In the sky, the cross and its victim lowered in the sky by just a millionth of an inch. “What? Speak in coherent words or be struck down like your comrades were before,” Arend spat. “Like the ones who sacrificed themselves to make sure the ritual is impossible to delay, or the weak lambs sent to be sacrificed by your hands? Trust me, Celestial Interloper, you wouldn’t have been able to take on our entire eternal legion. Parched, murmuring, glittering defeat.” Arend faltered and his eyes hardened. “Why don’t you show yourself? Show me the coward who be taken away by the tide of his ‘faith’, and the one who claims to know my strengths.” “I know because I know… I will be what I will be. Slithering space-time, flittering memory, trembling evanescence…” “I don’t have time for your riddles!” Arend screamed. His voice echoed off the nothingness in the air. The cross fell another fraction of distance. “Show yourself or be killed where you stand, it matters not to me. I will not, however, allow any of you to be living when the end comes!” “The cosmic egg can create, and believes it can destroy. No, these final trials of yours will come individually. There is no point in strategies to defeat you when there is no longer any competition, so your battles will be singular. Enjoy, eternal, virtual stars…” The voice in the darkness trailed off again. Before Arend could say anything, the far-right Key in the ivory white armor stepped forward, trailed by a short Master wearing a large toga-like expanse of cloth. “I will take the form of a corporeal world, and you will face the first eternal finality. He who would wield this Key unlocks eternal conquest, that one may slay and another be slain. Revive,” the disembodied voice commanded, “Carnage: New Era Sepulcher: Krueger, the first Chandrasekhar limit!” With these words spurring them on, the light red Key ran forward to Arend with broad sword extended as if to stab the boy. Arend crossed his arms as Klaytaza effortlessly parried the strike; however, Arend did not expect the Master to step forward with a blade of his own in his hand. “Oh,” Arend stated with amusement, “So this one will be quick?” With a mighty slash, Klaytaza pushed away the purely white armored Key and gracefully swung her lethal blade at the enemy Master. She did not push the Key far enough, though, and before the blade could kill the enemy, the light Key put a hand on Klaytaza. She fell to her knees with a shudder. Arend was taken aback from his Key’s apparent weakness for a second and would have been stabbed right in his heart by the blade from the enemy Master had he not come to his senses and hop backwards. “This is the ability of my Key,” the hooded Master stated. With a flourish of his arms, the caramel-skinned Master narrowed his dark eyes and smiled at Arend. “You cannot stand before Krueger and I. No one can. Ours is the power of the Creator’s conquest.” “I’m not here to trade words with anymore egotistical slobs,” Arend stated as he snapped at Klaytaza. Thus far, she had been struggling to stand again with the enemy Key’s hands upon her, but at Arend’s signal she redirected all of her energy and slid her longsword along the floor. Arend slapped his foot at the moving blade, sending it into the air, and he caught it with a snap of his right wrist. “Don’t tell me who I can’t stand against… Because not even your God can resist me.” The Master smirked as he twirled the small bejeweled knife in his fingers. “You take things too literal, I think.” “You don’t take me literally enough!” Arend jumped forward, throwing all of his weight behind one fast strike. The Master clumsily blocked it and stepped backwards. “Well? Why don’t you tell me I cannot attack you? The moment your Key comes to stop me, Klaytaza will rip your heart out. So tell me again who cannot stand against you?” The enemy Master only chuckled. “You cannot.” Arend fell to his knees. This was not simply an effect of gravity, as it was when he fought his first foe within the limits of the City. Rather, it was more accurate to call this ability a manipulation of his body. There was no pressure on his bones or surprise in his mind. If anything, he felt as if he were suddenly standing in front of a person who demanded complete respect, and to stand in his presence would be to invite a certain, shameful death. The robed Master raised his blade again, poised to decapitate Arend. “None may stand before a conqueror or his holy crusade. Don’t be ashamed; you will return to existence, one day.” He raised the blade and swung, the sharp alien metal of his weapon moving closer to Arend’s neck with each passing millisecond. At the very last instant, Arend looked to Klaytaza, and his gaze was immediately understood. Time stopped. Cracks appeared amongst all visible creation once again as everything became slightly discolored and everyone in the vicinity moved. Arend stood, his ethereal constraints removed now that he was within the realm of Klaytaza’s time compression, and moved away from the robed Master. Grabbing his longsword as he jumped up, he turned his back from the Master as Klaytaza ran and stabbed her hand through the Master, removing his heart. Before the five seconds of timelessness elapsed, Arend stood away from the soon-to-perish Master and his now-defunct Key, and faced the remaining foes in front of him. “One,” stated the figure concealed in the darkness. Time began to flow again. KEYS TO ETERNITY REMAINING: 4